Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to electronic commerce, and more particularly to facilitating the negotiation of standards for inter-enterprise collaboration between trading partners.
Background of the Invention
For trading partners to collaborate, they must first agree on a set of standards for collaboration. One option for agreeing on a set of standards for collaboration is to utilize public standards. These are “one-size-fits-all,” lowest common denominator standards that are unlikely to allow trading partners to differentiate themselves or adapt to the nuances of their businesses. Another option for agreeing on a set of standards for collaboration is to negotiate a private, differentiated standard. Once such a standard is negotiated (typically in extensible markup language (XML) form), significant time (e.g., months) may be required to enable the back-end collaboration software of the trading partners to adapt to the private standard. This can dramatically slow down efforts to establish and maintain collaborative relationships between the trading partners.